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Rockshelf

My group of adventurers are moving fast. They'll clear their current adventure next weekend and go onto the fabled city of Rockshelf, Enclave of Goblins loyal to the Crown of Cragdowns.

Only I don't have Rockshelf ready. Going to have to remedy that!

I've spent the afternoon laying out the terrain. The city of Rockshelf sits in an extinct crater carved and recarved by a lake. A few hundred years ago an earthquake cracked the northern rim of the crater and out flowed the lake. Although there is still a large lake within, the level has receded. The bottom layer is the lake. A small smidgen of grasslands lead up to the first rock promontory. The inhabitants built their city upon 3 rock layers. This is badlands country. Box canyons, jagged cliffs and treacherous terrain rim the city offering very good protection. Teh north is protected by the lake and the necessity to cross the promontories or go boat-bound.

Here is the base map. I am uncertain whether I will finish this in FM8 or CD3. I have been using FM8 for a few years. CD3 is brand new, having recently been purchased.

I quite like this, it has a sense of real depth to it, Like I could really walk around the place. Nice job.

If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)

Job hunting, vacation and remodeling both bathrooms in our house. Not necessarily in that order. But with summer winding down, my gaming group is re-asserting itself this Saturday. I have enough material to sate them for two-a-months until the end of the year. What I didn't have done was this city.

I had a lot done. The base map and two of the 4 main sections done. I did the other two this week and then put the shadows down.

I decided not to clutter the map with placenames. I hope you like the look!

This is fantastic. I absolutely love it. I didn't see where you said what you started this in.

I did the terrain in Photoshop using tutorials found here from Zaramis' "Relatively Realistic Mountains" and Pasis' "Rising up the Mountains in Photoshop" tutorials. Once I was happy with the terrain, I imported it into Fractal Mapper 8.0. From there, I started creating the fortresses on the islands in the north and the little settlement just north of there. I then started running some roads and placing buildings and the aqueduct system in the southern sector. I then added in the west and east sides. Once I was happy with all the buildings and roads, I added a layer of shadow. I finished it off with the directional cartouche [garnered from CC3] and made a map scale.